Sense8 Information

Sense8 (a play on the word sensate ) is an American science fiction drama web television series created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski for Netflix. Sense8 is being produced by the Wachowskis' Anarchos Productions and Straczynski's Studio JMS, along with Javelin Productions and Georgeville Television. Unpronounceable Productions has been set up to oversee production for the show.

A multinational ensemble cast starring Aml Ameen, Doona Bae, Jamie Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton, Max Riemelt, Miguel ngel Silvestre and Brian J. Smith portrays eight strangers from different parts of the world who suddenly become "sensates"; human beings who are mentally and emotionally linked. Freema Agyeman, Terrence Mann, Anupam Kher, Naveen Andrews and Daryl Hannah also star. The show aims to explore subjects that its creators feel have historically not been emphasized in most science fiction shows to date, such as politics, identity, sexuality, gender and religion.

The first season was written by the Wachowskis and Straczynski and most episodes were directed by the Wachowskis, with the remainder being divided between their frequent collaborators James McTeigue, Tom Tykwer and Dan Glass. For the production of the second season, Lilly Wachowski remained active as co-creator but took a break from writing and directing, marking it as the first time the sisters didn't work as one unit in their professional careers. Sense8 is shot almost entirely on location in a multitude of cities around the world.

The first season, consisting of 12 episodes, became available for streaming on Netflix on June 5, 2015, and has been met with generally favorable critical reception. It has become notable for its presentation of LGBT characters and themes, winning the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series. It has also received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music. On August 8, 2015, Netflix announced that it had renewed the show for a second season. Later, it was announced that Netflix will release a 2-hour Christmas special on December 23, 2016 and a 10-episode second season on May 5, 2017.

Premise

Sense8 tells the story of eight strangers: Capheus, Sun, Nomi, Kala, Riley, Wolfgang, Lito and Will, each from a different culture and part of the world. When the eight suddenly experience a vision of the violent death of a woman called Angelica, they discover that they are "sensates": otherwise normal humans linked with a mental and emotional connection, making them able to sense and communicate with each other, as well as share their knowledge, language and skills. While trying to live their lives and figure out how and why this connection has happened and what it means, they are aided by another sensate, Jonas, who is trying to protect them from a similarly empowered sensate called "Whispers", who leads an organization that hunts down his own kind by tapping into their psychic link.

Cast

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The eight sensates

• Aml Ameen as Capheus "Van Damme" Onyango, a matatu driver in Nairobi and a passionate fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme who is trying to earn money to buy AIDS medicine for his mother. Toby Onwumere has been set to replace Ameen in the second season.
• Doona Bae as Sun Bak, daughter of a powerful Seoul businessman and a burgeoning star in the underground kickboxing world.
• Jamie Clayton as Nomi Marks, a trans woman hacktivist and blogger living in San Francisco with her girlfriend Amanita. She was born Michael but changed her name to Nomi, which stands for "Know Me".
• Tina Desai as Kala Dandekar, a university-educated pharmacist and devout Hindu in Mumbai who is engaged to marry a man she does not love.
• Tuppence Middleton as Riley Blue (ne Gunnarsdttir), an Icelandic DJ living in London who is trying to escape a troubled past.
• Max Riemelt as Wolfgang Bogdanow, a Berlin locksmith and safe-cracker who has unresolved issues with his late father and participates in organized crime.
• Miguel ngel Silvestre as Lito Rodriguez, a closeted actor of Basque background living in Mexico City with his boyfriend Hernando.
• Brian J. Smith as Will Gorski, a Chicago police officer haunted by an unsolved murder from his childhood. Speaking about the Wachowskis picking names that carry a significance for their characters, Smith said about "Will": "The whole idea of Will Gorsky, the idea of someone who's got this drive to act and to do, not just to be done to. It's very central to Will's character."

Other regulars

• Freema Agyeman as Amanita "Neets", Nomi's girlfriend, who later becomes an ally for the new sensates.
• Terrence Mann as "Whispers", a sensate who turned against his own kind and who leads an organization determined to neutralize sensates.
• Anupam Kher as Sanyam Dandekar, Kala's loving father, a chef and restaurant owner.
• Naveen Andrews as Jonas Maliki, a sensate from a different cluster who wants to help the newly-born cluster of sensates.
• Daryl Hannah as Angelica "Angel" Turing, a sensate from an older cluster (which included Jonas) who becomes the "mother" of the new sensates' cluster as she activates their psychic connection.

Episodes

Season 1 (2015)

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Christmas special

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Season 2

The series was renewed for a second season on August 8, 2015. Main unit filming began in March 2016 following two short separate shoots in late December 2015 and late January 2016 respectively. Filming for the Christmas special and the second season completed on September 19, 2016. On December 3, 2016, Netflix announced that the 10-episode second season will be released on May 5, 2017.

Production

Conception

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According to the Wachowskis, the origins of Sense8 date back several years before the announcement of the show to "a late-night conversation about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us". Straczynski recalls that when the Wachowskis decided to create their first series, because of Straczynski's extensive experience working with the format, Lana chose to invite him to her house in San Francisco to brainstorm ideas together. Both the Wachowskis and Straczynski agreed that if they were to do a television series, they wanted to attempt something that "nobody had done before", and change the "vocabulary for television production" the same way The Matrix became a major influence for action movies. After several days of discussion they decided on creating a show that would explore the relationship between empathy and evolution in the human race, and whose story would be told in a global scale, necessitating filming on location in several countries over the world, in contrast to the standard production model for television which attempts to limit or fake that as much as possible. A source of inspiration for Straczynski was his own experience concerning friends of his who live in different parts of the world but coordinate to watch a movie at the same time and comment to each other online about it.

The title of the show was thought up by Lana on their second day of brainstorming, during a time when they hadn't yet decided how many characters they were going to have. Lana appeared to Straczynski with a notebook with the word "Sense8" written in it, as a play on the word sensate and the notion of eight main characters, telling him "The hard part is over now!".

Development

The trio became so excited with the concept they came up with, they decided to do initial development on their own instead of pitching it to someone else. The Wachowskis wrote three hour-long spec scripts, and together with Straczynski attempted to shop them around, such as at Warner Bros. and HBO, but when they saw that nobody could understand the concept they decided to shelve it. A few years later, when they felt that the landscape of television had become friendlier towards more experimental concepts, they decided to pitch it a second time. On October 2, 2012, Variety first reported the existence of the show, by writing that the Wachowskis, with the help of Straczynski's Studio JMS and Georgeville Television, would be shopping Sense8 around Los Angeles the week to follow. If the series was picked up, the sisters and Straczynski would be sharing showrunner duties. Additionally, the Wachowskis were planning to direct a few episodes of the show if their schedule permitted it. According to Straczynski, the first meeting with potential buyers was with Netflix. The Wachowskis and Straczynski talked to them about subjects such as gender, identity, secrecy and privacy. According to Lana they pitched shooting on location all over the globe to which Netflix responded favorably, which was in contrast to the "clearly impossible" response they had received by other outlets during their earlier abortive attempt. They also told Netflix they were only interested if they had the freedom to "do anything", like "crazy psychic orgies with all sorts of different bodies" and "live births even" to which Netflix also responded positively. After the end of the meeting, despite it having seemingly gone well, they worried they had made a mistake because they hadn't pitched any action or otherwise commercial aspects. By noon, and before they had the chance to pitch it to other outlets, such as HBO, Netflix called them to preemptively offer to buy and produce the first season. Netflix announced that they had ordered a 10-episode first season for the series on March 27, 2013. Later, during filming, because of the density of the scripts and the extended length of the first cut of the first episode, the showrunners and Netflix came to an agreement to extend the season to 12 episodes.

Before filming began, Straczynski and the Wachowskis mapped out five seasons worth of stories for the series, including the series' final episode, similarly to what Straczynski had previously done on his Babylon 5 series. The actors cast were signed for five seasons. "We pitched it as a five-year story. We've mapped out five seasons of this thing, our actor deals are being made for five seasons, five or six depending on the breaks," said Straczynski. The first season acts as the origin story for the characters. When asked how long is their story bible, Straczynski replied "It's in our heads". However, Straczynski did compile a 30-page document detailing the key points of a hypothetical second season should the first season become a success.

Comic book artist Steve Skroce, who has been collaborating with the Wachowskis since The Matrix on both film and comic book media, has created storyboards for the show. Julie Wachowski, sister to the Wachowskis, is given the credit of "story researcher" in the closing credits of each episode.

Lilly Wachowski, after completing her gender transition, decided to take some time off and did not return as writer or director for the second season, although she remained active as co-creator. Straczynski, who had a very active role during season 1 from pre-production to post-production in order to assist the Wachowskis with their first foray into TV, said his primary involvement in season 2 finished with the completion of the writing phase, as Lana felt this time she had the required experience to tackle the filmmaking aspect of the show on her own. According to the actors shooting locations in the second season have expanded from nine cities in the first season to fifteen.

Writing

Initial writing for the first season was split between the Wachowskis and Straczynski. The Wachowskis wrote episodes one, two, three, seven and eight while Straczynski wrote episodes four, five, six, nine and ten. Then the Wachowskis rewrote Straczynski's scripts and vice versa. Straczynski said a good portion of the writing was done by just Lana and himself. Straczynski believes writing with the Wachowskis helped mask each other's weaknesses and also allowed each party to learn from the other. He recognizes action and plot as their biggest strengths but structure as their weakness. On the other hand he views himself as really good on structure but weak on action. Straczynski said the way he works is by first developing the entire script in his head, from the first sentence to the last, before sitting down to write it, while the Wachowskis begin by writing the scenes they have already developed, leaving the others they haven't figured out yet for later, while they constantly move the pieces around to see in which way they work best.

Earlier versions of the story featured a sensate from Iraq and more about Whispers, the villain of the show. The show was transformed when the writers decided to limit the storytelling, with the exception of the opening scene of the first episode, to the perspective of the eight characters. This means that every scene set in San Francisco must be about Nomi, in Chicago about Will and so on. Since the show begins with the characters not knowing what is happening to them and without being able to cut e.g. to the villains like a traditional show, the audience starts with the same questions and confusion as the characters do. As the characters slowly begin to understand more about what's happening to them over the course of several episodes, the audience does as well, at the same pace. Straczynski notes this type of writing wouldn't work if they were writing for a traditional network. "The first episode is written in a way that you could never do a pilot. With pilots you have to set up all the rules and explain everything to hook people in." said Stranczynski. Instead, taking advantage of the binge-watching model Netflix promotes, the series was written as a continuous 12 hour movie, making it possible to tell the story at a different pace.

Lana Wachowski, a trans woman, has written her first transgender character in her career in the series: Nomi Marks. For that she partly used her own experiences. "It has some very intense, autobiographical scenes, and that was very difficult and surreal", said Lana. Straczynski stated that like Lana felt the closest to Nomi, Wolfgang Bogdanow was the character he felt the closest to, because they both had a bad relationship with their respective fathers. "Wolfgang was my true north in the storytelling." said Straczynski. Straczynski did not reveal who was the character Lilly Wachowski felt the closest to during the writing process, saying it's up to her to do that. Since then Lilly has come out as transgender too. The beginning of her transitioning process preceded the release of the first season and Jamie Clayton, who plays Nomi Marks, had known early on.

Unlike the first season, where the Wachowskis and Straczynski split the amount of scripts in half and worked remotely from each other (but with frequent meetings), writing for the second season was done by collaborating inside a shared writers' room.

Casting

For the roles of those characters living outside of America, the filmmakers wanted to assemble a cast of international actors that matched the nationality of their respective characters, if possible. For example Riemelt, Desai and Bae are from Berlin, Mumbai and Seoul like their respective characters. Because the eight leads share the same birthday, the actors selected were all somewhere between mid-20s and mid-30s. The filmmakers wanted to write a Chinese, Japanese or Korean character and since the Wachowskis had worked with Bae on Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending before, they decided on creating a Korean character for her. Bae expressed worry on signing on Sense8 because the proposed five season plan could mean she would have to be able to film action scenes for the next ten years, which would be difficult if she ever decided to get married and got pregnant. She joined the cast after the showrunners told her not to worry as they would kill off her character for her if that ever happened. Middleton knew the Wachowskis were writing Sense8 while working with them on Jupiter Ascending but she didn't think they would ask her to play a role. Clayton is a trans woman like the character she plays. She was attracted to Sense8 because of the opportunity to play a transgender character that was written and directed by a transgender filmmaker, and because she was a fan of science fiction and Straczynski. Hannah was brought in to read for Whispers, because they were thinking of making him an androgynous character at the time, but when she arrived she was told they'd like her to read for the role of Angelica. Christian Oliver, who had previously participated in Speed Racer, was excited to play a villain for the Wachowskis for a second time.

For the second season of Sense8, Kick Gurry, who had played parts in Speed Racer and Jupiter Ascending in the past, received a call by Lana informing him they had a written a role specifically for him. On April 26, 2016 Deadline reported that Ameen abruptly left production a couple of episodes into filming of the second season over a conflict with Lana Wachowski that started during the table read for the season and progressively got worse. Subsequently, the role of Capheus was recast to Toby Onwumere after a seven-day auditioning process. Both the Deadline article and Ameen's co-star on Sense8, Tuppence Middleton, suggested the conflict was over creative differences. When asked about it, Straczynski commented he wasn't there to know what happened between Ameen and Lana but he respects the choices of both parties. In September 2016, Sylvester McCoy reportedly revealed he filmed three or four episodes of the second season of a Netflix show, later identified to be Sense8, and has signed to appear in further seasons if he is wanted. Carmen Cuba served as the casting director on the series.

Filming and locations

To properly tell the international aspects of the story, filming for Sense8 takes place almost entirely on location around the globe. In the first season they filmed in nine cities located in eight countries: Chicago, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Seoul, Reykjavk, Mexico City, Nairobi and Mumbai. Production on the first season began on June 18, 2014 in San Francisco. The filmmakers successfully negotiated with the organizers of the Clarion Alley Mural Project and select artists to feature their artwork in the show. Shooting in Chicago began on July 9 and wrapped up on August 8, with filming taking place both on location and at the Cinespace Film Studios. During location scouting, the producers found the City Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana and changed one site's description in the scripts to a church accordingly in order to fit that particular site into the filming. They also shot some scenes in Chicago's Superdawg drive-through restaurant, while customers were being asked not to stare at the filming. Lana and Lilly Wachowski are frequent customers of the place. In Germany filming also took place in Babelsberg Studio, outside Berlin. A sequence in Nairobi required a crowd of 700 extras, 200 cars and a helicopter. In Mumbai they shot a Bollywood dance number that was choreographed by Slumdog Millionaires Longinus Fernandes. The writers wanted to feature an event in each city. They were able to schedule the Pride scenes with its Dykes on Bikes on the Dyke March in San Francisco, the Fourth of July fireworks celebration in Chicago, and the Ganesha Chaturthi Hindu festival in Mumbai. Additionally they recorded footage from the Fresh Meat Festival of transgender and queer performance in San Francisco, a club event taking place at the KOKO in London, and a real lucha libre (Mexican professional wrestling) event with the fighters wearing wrestling masks in Arena Naucalpan, in Mexico City. Lastly the scenes where characters are flying on an airplane were recorded during the real flights the cast and crew had to do to get from London to Iceland. On November 17, 2014. Straczynski wrote that the main unit shooting had wrapped, with only a few winter shots in Iceland remaining to be captured the next month. These scenes were further delayed to mid-January 2015, until Iceland had the necessary amount of snow, with the wrap party taking place in Reykjavk's Harpa Music and Concert hall on January 21, 2015. By the end of the shooting, the filmmakers had completed 100,000 miles of flight time, or four times around the globe.

Production start for the main unit of the second season was given an expected date of March 2016, but a separate shoot involving the principal actors began on December 30, 2015 in Berlin to capture footage during the Christmas holidays. This was followed by a short two-day shoot in Chicago on January 23 and 24, 2016. Filming resumed in Berlin in the middle of March 2016 and proceeded to Mumbai on March 25, 2016 for a ten-day shoot. On April 7, 2016 filming started in Positano and later in April moved to Mexico in Mexico City and for one day in Metepec. On May 7, 2016 filming began in California in San Francisco and lasted up to the 23rd of May. Location manager Matthew Riutta was fined by the Department of Parks and Recreation when "someone accidentally got naked" during a romantic scene set at the tree swing in Billy Goat Hill. A short shoot in Malibu followed. Filming in So Paulo, including its 20th Gay Pride Parade took place in late May. Filming in Chicago began on June 5 and wrapped up on June 15, then moved to the United Kingdom in London, Cambridge and Scotland, and wrapped on July 4. Then, filming moved to the Netherlands in Amsterdam and The Hague up to the 19th. Then filming proceeded to Nairobi and in South Korea, in Seoul and Bucheon. Afterwards filming returned briefly to London and to Berlin until the middle of September. Filming then moved to Malta for a two-day shoot. On September 19, 2016 with the completion of the Malta shoot, filming for the second season came to an end.

Directing

The show's directors were attached to locations instead of episodes and with several countries appearing in every episode, in reality none of them has a singular director. During the first season the Wachowskis were responsible for directorial duties in scenes shot in Chicago and San Francisco along with London and Iceland, two places which were initially announced to be helmed by Straczynski. Straczynski eventually opted to offer them to the siblings because of the extensive action scenes involved in those locations and instead focused his energy on post-production. James McTeigue (V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin) worked on the Mexico City and Mumbai parts along with some in Reykjavk and German director Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), whose Nairobi Half Life production impressed the Wachowskis, helmed Berlin and Nairobi. Dan Glass, who had been the visual effects supervisor for every Wachowski film since The Matrix Reloaded, reprised his role in Sense8 while also making his directorial debut in the Seoul part of the story. Even though there were times that units located in different countries were simultaneously shooting, the Wachowskis would travel to the various locations and have collaborations with the attached directors. Reportedly the Wachowskis directed such segments in locations where a different director was otherwise attached as the stunts the character of Silvestre performed for his action movie in Mexico City and in Nairobi car chase scenes with the "Van Damn" bus along with a fight scene involving machetes. In total, the Wachowskis were credited for directing seven episodes, McTeigue and Tykwer two each, and Glass one. During filming of the first season of Sense8 the Wachowskis were shooting ten to fifteen pages a day, which was much faster than the two to three pages a day pace they were used to on the typical large budget film. They commented it put a lot of pressure on them, but Lilly also called it exciting learning how to adapt to it. Tykwer said he had to be moving at a pace of completing seven minutes per day, which he similarly found it highly unusual coming from the world of film.

In the second season, Lana Wachowski took over many of the filmmaking aspects of the show, which combined with her sister's break, made her responsibilities as director shoot up. Production sound mixer Stevie Haywood recounted Lana's directing style was to use two cameras as the default setup, and develop the shot over "enormously long takes" which could last up to fifteen to twenty minutes. Additionally, the cast and crew under Lana didn't use any rehearsals. "We rehearse on camera effectively" said Haywood. If there were any technical issues Lana expected the cast to improvise and keep the shoot going instead of calling "cut". Tykwer returned as director for the Nairobi parts but not for the Berlin ones, as he was busy working on his own TV series, Babylon Berlin.

Cinematography

Netflix required the production to shoot with 4K cameras to make the look of the show future-proof and John Toll who is credited as the main director of photography for overseeing the distinct look of the nine featured locations, made the decision to shoot by using mostly Sony's CineAlta PMW-F55 cameras, paired with Carle Zeiss Ultra Prime and Cooke Optics S4 lenses. During the first season, Toll, once again collaborating with the Wachowskis and Glass after Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending, personally handled the cinematography in Chicago, San Francisco, London, Iceland, and Seoul. Toll's approach to shooting was to use a lot of Steadicam and hand-held partly out of the necessity to follow the faster schedule of a television production compared to the feature films he was used to working on. Additional cinematographers worked with the rest of the directors in the remaining locations and they used a similar shooting style because they were facing the same scheduling challenges. McTeigue's cinematographer of choice for shooting in Mexico City and Mumbai was Danny Ruhlmann, who previously shot The Raven and Survivor for him. Tykwer worked with Frank Griebe and Christian Almesberger for the Berlin and Nairobi scenes respectively. Griebe had previously shot seven feature films of Tykwer's including Cloud Atlas and Almesberger was the cinematographer of two films Tykwer had produced in Nairobi: Soul Boy and Nairobi Half Life.

Effects and post-production

Seoul unit director Dan Glass and Jim Mitchell were the visual effects supervisors of the first season. An in-house VFX team was established in Chicago which completed over 700 shots. The major external VFX vendors were Locktix VFX (160-180 shots), Technicolor VFX (over 100 shots) and Encore VFX. Additional work was done by Studio 8 FX, Trace VFX and Almost Gold. Because of the series' tight budget and timeline the production made the decision to do most of the effects in-camera and only enhance them digitally where appropriate. In fact for a great number of shots which involved the sensates communicating and visiting each other telepathically the cast were simply moving in and out of the frame in timely fashion requiring no additional work. According to Glass most of the VFX work that was done is invisible in the final show and consisted mostly of split-screens, crew and rig removal, weather augmentation and screen inserts. Of the more visible work done, Glass provided the examples of age manipulation of actors, dramatic enhancement of the weather in the car scenes in Iceland, a few greenscreens, and computer generated blades, blood and wounds.

Technicolor provided dailies and worked with cinematographer John Toll and the Wachowskis to color grade the show giving it a look which colorist Tony Dustin describes as "both real and surreal, with a slightly elevated color-saturation". The Wachowskis made the mandate for production to not "lock reels", as it's typically done on TV shows, but instead be able to tinker editorially with the series' narrative, look and tone up to two weeks before release. They also wanted the color grading of the series to be done in the da Vinci Resolve software and be of theatrical feature film quality. Technicolor finished the show in 4K and delivered both 2K and 4K resolution masters.

Sense8 is edited in the Wachowskis' headquarters in Chicago, Kinowerks, by Joe Hobeck and Joseph Jett Sally. Sally previously worked with the Wachowskis as first assistant editor on Speed Racer and editor on Ninja Assassin. The Wachowskis found editing a TV show to be a challenging process because of the required fast turnaround times. Lilly commented that for a feature film they get a minimum of ten weeks for editing as mandated by the Directors Guild of America, while for Sense8 they had to be moving at a pace of completing two one-hour episodes (roughly the equivalent of a feature film) every two weeks.

Music

Tom Tykwer and Johnny Klimek, who co-composed the score for Cloud Atlas and had a minor contribution in the soundtrack of The Matrix Revolutions as part of Pale 3, composed the series' music which was orchestrated by their fellow Cloud Atlas collaborator Gene Pritsker. Klimek commented on his and Tykwer's collaboration with the Wachowskis: "We would often just do a one-week mad writing session. It's a very collaborative process, and there's no ego involved." The music was written before filming began and it was recorded by the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra. This way the production was able to play it back to the actors before shooting a scene. Tykwer, who has made the music for all of his movies this way, introduced to the Wachowskis the concept of first writing the music during pre-production of Cloud Atlas and the sisters have since commented they are not making a movie again a different way.

The theme music was picked by the Wachowskis from the two hours of original music Tykwer and Klimek had written. It was shortened from its original seven or eight minutes and a choir and electronic elements were added to it at the wish of the Wachowskis. The show received a nomination for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music during the 68th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

Ethan Stoller and Gabriel Isaac Mounsey, past collaborators of the Wachowskis and Tykwer, are credited for composing additional music and score. Stoller also acted as the series' music editor.

The title of Episode 4 "What's Going On?" refers to lyrics in the song "What's Up?" by the 4 Non Blondes, which is featured in a scene where the main cast collectively sings it as their first shared experience together. After Nomi escaped from the hospital she said the lyrics were in her head all day and Amanita recognized the song saying it was the perfect soundtrack for a lobotomy.

Title sequence

For the series' almost two-minute long title sequence, Karin Winslow "? wife of Lana Wachowski "? rented a car and with the help of a camera assistant traveled in the eight featured countries and captured over a hundred shots. "My directive from Lana was to go out and describe each country by what you see; find the nuances, find the food, find what people are doing, get a feel for the place," said Winslow. In the series, she is credited for the "main title design".

Marketing

Starting in the middle of July 2015, Netflix Brazil released a series of documentary shorts called Sense8: Decoded. Inspired by Sense8 and directed by Joo Wainer, the shorts briefly touch upon subjects such as psychiatry, feminism, being transgender and buddhism. Later in the month, Netflix released a music track titled Brainwave Symphony on Spotify. To produce it they subjected eight strangers to a series of various stimuli and they recorded their individual brainwaves using EEG sensors. After extracting a melody from each of them they arranged them in a way to produce a track which mirrors the escalating action of the season. In early August 2015, Netflix made available Sense8: Creating the World, a half-hour web television documentary, shot around the world, about the making of season 1 of the series.

On May 3, 2016 publicity stills of the ongoing production of season 2 were posted online accompanied by a short message by Lana Wachowski introducing the #Road2Sense8 hashtag under which new pictures would be posted.

Reception

Critical reception and popularity

Critical reception of Sense8 has been generally favorable. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator website, reported a 67% critical approval rating with an average rating of 6.1/10 based on 43 reviews, and a 92% audience approval rating. The website's critical consensus reads, "Some of the scenarios border on illogical, but the diverse characters and the creative intersections between their stories keep the Wachowskis' Sense8 compelling." On Metacritic the show is assigned a score of 63 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

In a report released by Netflix it was discovered that at least 70% of the viewers that watched up to the third episode ended up watching the entire first season, and Straczynski was told there are people that watch it "straight through - three, four, six times." In another report released by Netflix, Sense8 was listed among the shows whose viewers tend to heavily binge-watch their first seasons, rather than savoring their episodes by watching them at a slower pace. Netflix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos praised the success of Sense8 in the up-and-coming French and German markets but also globally. Less than three days after its premiere, Variety reported that the show had been pirated more than half a million times, regardless of the series' digital distribution.

Accolades

Year	Award	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
2015	Camerimage	First Look - TV Pilots Competition	Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski (directors), Christian Almesberger, Frank Griebe, Danny Ruhlmann and John Toll (cinematographers)		</ref>}}
2016	Dorian Awards	LGBTQ TV Show of the Year	Sense8		</ref>}}
		Campy TV Show of the Year	Sense8
	GLAAD Media Awards	Outstanding Drama Series	Sense8		</ref>}}
	HPA Awards	Outstanding Color Grading - Television	Tony Dustin		</ref>}}
	Location Managers Guild Awards	Outstanding Locations in a Contemporary Television Series	Marco Giacalone and Bill Bowling		</ref>}}
	Saturn Awards	Best New Media Television Series	Sense8		</ref>}}
	Emmy Awards	Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music	Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer		</ref>}}
	Online Film & Television Association Award	Best New Theme Song In A Series	Sense8		</ref>}}